Roadtrip: Neville in Door County

Laura just retired after watching Gene, Sarah, and I living relatively unscheduled lives for several years. She has been itching to go on a roadtrip in the middle of the week and to visit places she hasn't been. Door County is a major tourist destination in Wisconsin but she and Gene had never been there. Sarah and I had only made a day trip there in the late '80s. We planned our visit around a performance at Peninsula Players Theatre on a Tuesday night.

I loaded Neville with a 36 exposure roll of Lomo 100.

They arrived at our house on Monday afternoon. The white highlight near the chair is not their Bichon - it's Gene's shoes.

Laura doing some research as we plan the next day.

Dinner in the dining room.

Oaks chocolate and Port after dinner.

This is exactly how things looked to me just before I went to bed.

 Triple exposure! My last attempt at the dining room table; a leafy view I don't remember taking; and Door County Distillery, our first stop along the way.

The tasting room where you can sample their products.

Despite the somewhat gloomy weather it was still rather warm and muggy, so we enjoyed our drinks on the deck 

Cherries are a signature agricultural product of Door County, and clear Cherry Brandy a specialty of the house. I had their version of the Wisconsin State Cocktail, a Brandy Old Fashioned Sweet. Why do people think it's hip to serve drinks in mugs which look like you can't afford glasses?

It tasted like cherry soda pop.

Our first night was at the Landing Resort in Egg Harbor. All the hotels in Door County are either an inn, a lodge or a resort.

We shared a nice apartment style suite with one of the beds in a loft.

It had a deck facing the woods and some of the HVAC equipment quaintly disguised with latticework.

It was too early for dinner and the Hatch Distilling Company just happened to be right across the street.

All the shiny copper equipment is visible from the tasting room.

Studying the menu of custom drinks and specials.

Worried about my endurance at the theater later on, I got one of the specials - a Jamaican Jerk Virgin Mary.

This was the only time the sun came out during the trip.

On to dinner in a nice tapas restaurant housed in a restored home.

It was the best meal of the trip.

On the drive up, although it's never more than a half mile from Green Bay, you only rarely get a glimpse of it. The next morning we stopped at the Egg Harbor Marina and walked out on the breakwater to watch the rain clouds move in.

Door County is part of the western end of the Niagara Escarpment which creates dramatic cliffs overlooking Green Bay.  You can't see much from the highway but every few miles there's a County Park down a dirt road, through the woods, where you can see the bay.

This one had a platform out over the edge.

It rained pretty consistently most of the morning but Door County is well prepared to give you an opportunity to shop when you can't enjoy the natural beauty. We stopped at the Tannenbaum Shop, an all-Christmas-all-the-time store in a converted church but which also had a nice display of Halloween decor.

As noted in an earlier post, we took the ferry across the Death's Door Straight to visit Washington Island.

At the Sunset Resort, this hallway was pointed out to us as where to view the eponymous sunsets.

The property has been a resort since the 1890's. The current building is from 1938 and it's been run by the same family since then. Some of the furniture in the rooms looks original.

No TV's and only a whisper of the internet in the rooms. So we spent the evening in the common sitting room downstairs. We had the TV to ourselves and watched Rachel Maddow. There were several groups in the adjacent dining room playing cards and Mahjong.

An earlier post illustrates the day on Washington Island, and there's still film from the trip in the Manic Expression Cube.

Neville has a .15mm hand-drilled pinhole 24mm from a 24x36mm frame. The film is a 36 exposure roll of Lomography Color 100.